


In Love With Your Chaos

by Baliseth



Category: Death Stranding (Video Games)
Genre: Broken is beautiful, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Goldenbridges, Higgs/Sam, Homo Demens (Death Stranding), I Don't Even Know, I am going to hurt them, I hate you I love you I don't know, I'm Bad At Tagging, Idiots in Love, Kintsugi, M/M, POV Multiple, POV Third Person, Rivalry, Sam/Higgs - Freeform, Sometime in Chapter Six, Sorry Not Sorry, no one gets to kill you but me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-03
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:15:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28517007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baliseth/pseuds/Baliseth
Summary: The concept of the guardian angel might have vanished with the Death Stranding but Sam can't help but think that there's someone out there looking out for him. He just never expected it to be him.
Relationships: Sam Porter Bridges/Higgs Monaghan
Comments: 3
Kudos: 23





	1. Sam

An arsenal of tools at his command, and it still wasn’t enough to keep him out of the sights of the local terrorist cell. A stray bullet tore through the armor plating on his left shoulder and Sam cursed aloud as the arm fell dead at his side. It wasn’t the first time he’d run afoul of these bastards, but now he was regretting leaving them alive after their last encounter. Maybe it was worth the extra trip to the incinerator if it meant he wouldn’t have to deal with them anymore. That chip that Heartman was so desperate to see would have to wait. 

He emptied the clip in his non-lethal rifle -- again, cursing his stupid empathic heart -- and tossed he empty gun aside, spinning on his heel. Maybe, if he was lucky, he might be able to outrun them. His battery was nearly drained, but running from destination to destination when trucks or trikes weren’t available had granted him a little extra stamina. Just a little, but all he could do was hope it was enough. 

He tossed a stun grenade over his shoulder and took off running, not stopping to see if it actually hit anyone. Slowly, ever so slowly, the noise of the terrorists faded behind him and by the time he dared to peak over his shoulder, they’d already found another porter to terrorize. Sam winced inwardly, but with one dead arm and more than one dead battery, he wasn’t in any shape to help anyone. He’d just end up getting them both killed. 

“Good luck,” he whispered under his breath, stumbling over the uneven ground as he made his way back to Mountain Knot City. The path was, blessedly, clear after a battle with one of Higgs’ favorite lion-shaped BTs earlier in the day. He couldn’t lift that left arm but he could feel warm blood dripping down his fingers, leaving a trail in his wake. 

Sam glanced at his compass. Just half a click before he could rest and heal in his private room. One step after the next, one foot in front of the other. 

The edges of his vision started to darken. Sam groped for a spare blood bag in his utility pouch but came up empty handed. He stumbled on the stones in his path, cursed his own laziness for not finishing the roads first, and fell to the ground. 

“Fuck!” he snarled, the impact clearing some of the shadows from the corners of his eyes. His right hand hit the ground first, but it wasn’t enough to catch him and the rest soon followed. He could hear a stream trickling by but he couldn’t tell if it was a few feet or a few hundred feet away. 

“Get up, Sam,” he said to himself. The temptation to sleep there on the ground, even for a few minutes, was overwhelming. “Get the hell up, Bridges.” 

Mustering his strength, he pressed against the ground, but it felt like gravity was increasing, holding him to the earth. The shadows started creeping in again, and he sighed. He’d have to rest here, just for a minute. 

“Well, well, what have we here?” drawled a voice that sent a chill down his spine. “Sam Porter Bridges, what trouble have you been getting yourself up to?” 

“Higgs,” Sam hissed, struggling to sit up and face the leader of the Homo Demens, even if he couldn’t muster the strength to get off the ground. His dead arm slumped uselessly into the mud. “I’m not in the mood.” 

“Aww, Bridges, I’m hurt,” replied Higgs, a grin tugging up the corners of his mouth. He clasped his hands over his heart and a soft chuckle spilled from his lips. “Here I was, just coming to check up on my favorite porter, and all I find is a trail of blood and a poor, broken toy in the mud.” He vanished, reappearing right next to Sam, close enough that the porter could smell the nauseating combination of blood and chiralium that always signaled Higgs’ approach. “No fun to play with damaged goods.” 

Sam tried to swing his good arm at the terrorist leader’s smug smile, but only succeeded in dumping himself back into the mud. 

“Fuck off, Higgs,” Sam snarled. “Either help me or go find someone else to torment.” 

Higgs smiled, a fierce grin that showed his teeth. It wasn’t a friendly grin or even an amused one. It was the predator showing his teeth as a prelude to tearing your throat out. 

Sam felt another shard of ice sliver down his spine. The thought crossed his mind that he might actually not make it out of it this time. Those shadows at the corners of his vision threatened to overwhelm him. He knew that he would come back, that there was no threat of voidout if he closed his eyes and succumbed to the shadows, but dying sucked. Every time he ended up in the Seam, that strange submerged world that linked the land of the living to the Beaches of the dead, it took him longer and longer to find his body and make his way back. 

Eventually, he might not be able to find his way back. He wondered briefly if anyone would find him. Maybe he’d voidout after all. He shuddered but as the world faded away, he couldn’t be sure if it was cold, blood loss or actual fear. 

“Oh, no you don’t, Sammy-boy,” said Higgs. “I’m not done with you yet. You’ve still got a part to play.” He slammed his hand into Sam’s shoulder, covering the bullet wound with his palm. 

Sam screamed as the wound burned like Higgs was pouring acid into the gaping hole in his shoulder. He tried weakly to swat the terrorist’s hand away. Their eyes met, just for a second, before the world faded away but this time instead of cold, Sam found himself wrapped in an almost comforting warmth.

******

“Higgs!” Sam exclaimed as he snapped awake but instead of open sky, he saw the stone ceiling of a private room. His cuffs hung loose, preventing the room from taking it’s usual pint of blood while he slept. He snapped them closed around his wrist and as soon as he did, the incoming call alert echoed through the room’s speakers. Notifications drowned each other out as the system tried to catch up with everyone who’d tried to get in touch with him while he’d slept. 

Instead of giving him a chance to answer, Deadman barged in through the door. The larger man almost bundled Sam into a hug, but the porter flinched away and he caught himself. 

“Where have you been, Sam?” Deadman asked, taking two steps back. Concern wrinkled the corners of his eyes as he threw his arms wide. “The last we saw, you were on your way back to Mountain Knot and then you vanished.” 

“Higgs,” Sam said again, though less emphatically this time. “Terrorists landed a lucky shot, took out my left arm at the shoulder. I was bleeding out, fixing to die so I could just repatriate when Higgs showed up. He teased me for a minute, slapped a hand over my bullet wound, and then I woke up here.” 

“Why would he…” Deadman asked, trailing off and gesturing offhandedly at Sam’s shoulder. The porter shrugged and rolled his left shoulder. A night’s sleep in one of these private rooms was usually enough to heal most wounds but something like that could take days or weeks to heal. Surprisingly, there was almost no pain. He rolled the shoulder again, watching it out of the corner of his eye. Reaching up, he tugged down the collar of his shirt. The bare skin was marred with the shadows of BT handprints but he’d become accustomed to those. Every time he repatriated, another handprint showed up, and he’d been at this for a long time. 

He stood and crossed the room to the mirror. Instead of a bullet wound, or even a scar, there was a shimmering golden handprint on his shoulder. Lines of chiralium threaded beneath his skin, painting a ghostly pattern. The wound wasn’t gone. Higgs had filled it with chiralium instead. 

Deadman appeared over Sam’s shoulder in his reflection, fascinated by the handprint in the mirror. His fingers danced, not touching Sam’s skin but tracing the patterns in the air. 

“Oh my,” Deadman gasped. “For a normal human, constant contact with chiralium like this would be fatal, but for someone with DOOMs, it appears to merge with your flesh. I would like to take some samples…” he continued, trailing off as his mind started trying to grasp the complexities. Sam flinched away again. “Of course, at some other time.” He took a few steps back as Sam let the stretched fabric fall into place again. 

“Why would he…” Sam started before letting the thought vanish, unfinished, as he shook his head. It didn’t matter. He still had work to do and since a gunshot wound to the shoulder wasn’t slowing him down, he knew of a few terrorists that needed to meet the receiving end of an assault rifle. He promised himself that he’d remember a truck this time -- hauling bodies one at a time to the incinerator was a pain in the ass -- but he was done with their shit.


	2. Higgs

Higgs ghosted his way through the Beach, his feet barely touching the damp sand before he disappeared again. It was a useful tool, that stretch of empty sand, but he didn’t like to spend any more time there than was strictly necessary. Even his brief visit would leave a chill like shards of ice in his veins that would take hours to thaw. 

He snapped back into reality in a shower of chiral sparks, eyes darting back and forth. The familiar surroundings weren’t exactly comfortable, but anything was better than the Beach. 

He tugged his hood and mask off and tossed them into a corner, cursing inwardly when he knocked over a precariously perched pile of old pizza boxes. The kohl that lined his eyes dripped over his cheekbones in a mockery of tears, but he couldn’t be bothered to wipe it away. The cape followed the mask into the corner, and piece by piece he stripped off the layers of timefall-proof gear, leaving him naked to the waist. 

His pale skin was criss-crossed with golden lines, chiralium infused into his flesh. He’d seen something on the chiral network about old craftsmen using gold or precious metals to repair broken pottery. Chiralium was easier to manipulate than gold, especially for someone with DOOMs like him, and infinitely easier to find. It aches sometimes, but a few cold scars were easier to deal with than waiting to heal the human way. 

His hands were still coated in tar and chiralium, and he let his eyes linger on the delicate outline on his palm, the ghost of the bullet wound he’d repaired in Sam’s shoulder. 

“We’re more alike than you’d like to believe, eh Sam?” he said softly to himself before shedding the rest of his gear and stepping into the shower. Tar might be part of life in the Death Stranding but after a while, it did tend to get into the most awkward and uncomfortable of places. 

Higgs closed his eyes and let the water wash over him. It wasn’t hot, not really, but it was a lot more comfortable than the cold river that provided water to his shelter. It was enough to soak the dry tar from his skin, and that was all that mattered. 

He left his mind drift, reveling in the feeling of the water flowing over his skin, but his thoughts kept drifting back to the porter he’d left bloody and bruised in a private room in Mountain Knot City. Higgs found himself wondering if Sam had woken up yet and if the porter had found his little patch job. He wondered how the chiral print would contrast against the other darkened hand prints on his skin. 

Before his thoughts could travel any further, the tepid water ran out and Higgs was left sputtering in icy water straight from the river. He quickly shut off the taps and let the air jets dry him off before slipping out of the shower and into clothes that probably weren’t strictly clean, but at least they weren’t covered in tar. 

“What the hell?” he drawled, looking at his face in the mirror. Without the dark kohl lines for contrast, his eyes were sunken, his skin sallow from wearing a mask for so long. The only thing that marked him as the Particle of God was the formula he'd tattooed on his forehead, a reminder of what -- of who -- he was. 

Cursing under his breath, he shut the mirror down with a wave of his hand. 

“He still has his part to play. That’s what she said,” Higgs said to himself. “No point in letting him die when he’s just gonna come back anyway.” The justification sounded hollow, even to him. 

He could feel Amalie tugging at the corners of his psyche. He’d locked her away in Edge Knot City a long time ago, but no one knew who she was. What she was. Sam thought he did, but even that damned optimistic qui-pu crafting porter didn’t have the slightest clue what he was dealing with. 

Higgs grinned. 

Piece by piece, he secured his gear. Nothing could be out of place, especially not if he had to make the trip to her beach. For a brief moment, he considered swinging by Mountain Knot, just to make sure Sam was already, before pushing the thought out of his mind. Of all the creatures on this Earth -- or what was left of it -- Amalie was the one that even he didn’t dare to keep waiting. With a thought, he vanished from the bunker in a cloud of chiral particles, speeding through his own beach in search of hers. 

Blonde hair. Fair skin. A gorgeous dress in the perfect shade of red. She’d have been stunning if he didn’t know what she was. “Hell, who am I trying to kid? She’s still stunning,” Higgs thought to himself. “Kind of like the pretty colors on a venomous snake.” 

“What was that?” she asked, her attention divided between the beach and trying to keep up with Sam’s progress with the chiral network. 

“Just thinking out loud, darlin,” Higgs replied with his characteristic drawl. “What’s the next move?” 

“We wait,” she replied. “Until Sam finishes the network, we’re stuck in limbo.” One hand reached up to touch her necklace, until she remembered that it wasn’t there anymore. Sam thought that he’d stolen it. Playing the villain was just part of the game. Until she didn’t need him anymore. 

Higgs shook off that thought. It was the end of the world, after all. Whether it ended now or it ended a little later, it didn’t really matter. 

“Then why am I here, if we’re just in a holding pattern?” he asked, trying hard to reign in his temper. 

She turned to face him. She might look human but meeting her eyes sent a shard of ice straight into his heart. 

“Because I am curious,” she said simply. “Because you chose to save him rather than letting him come to me. Why?” 

He cursed inwardly. He could lie with the best of them but a good lie takes preparation and something about these Strands kept catching him flatfooted. 

“He’s not done,” stammered Higgs. He took a breath and tried to regain a semblance of the arrogant nonchalance that he usually wore as comfortably as his cloak. “More KNOTS to tie, right? One foot after the other. Hard to do that if he’s gotta repatriate every few minutes.” 

Amalie’s expression was unreadable. She studied him, briefly, before affording him an almost imperceptible nod before turning away, locking her eyes on the horizon. That was as close to a dismissal as he might get, so he took advantage of it and vanished, leaping out of the beach entirely. He gasped, quietly, as warm air wrapped around him. The icy chill of the beach still settled into his bones, but it wasn’t anything that a quick dip in one of the hot springs wouldn’t fix, if he could find one that might be empty for a few minutes. If he could get that lucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This plays around a little with my head-canon that Higgs uses chiralium to patch his wounds rather than letting them heal naturally, kind of like a Death Stranding-esque kintsugi. I elaborate more on this in my other fic, All That Glitters. (https://archiveofourown.org/works/21564457)
> 
> Also I apologize for the random uploads, I tend to only write when the mood strikes me. I'm working on it. :)


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